Well, chris, I’ve got both meat and mat and am doing just fine! Terriffic, in fact. If you believe that humans need meat to be healthy (as I and many others do) then it would be against ahisma to not eat it. Saying you can’t eat meat and practice yoga is like saying you can’t drive a car and practice yoga (because emissions are bad) or you can’t have a jealous thought and practice yoga, etc. etc. It’s very self-righteous to condemn a practice you think is bad as something that makes yoga “end”.

Chris,
Let me get this straight. Nothing you have ever done has ever caused any harm to any living thing? And noone who’s life causes any harm to anything can “have” yoga? Well then I guess yoga doesn’t exist.

Hi Sarah,
Don’t worry, Chris is just one of the many yoga fundamentalists that run around telling people who’s “in” and whose “out” of the club. They are so similar to religious zealots that try to define what being a “good Christian/Muslim, etc” is. Chris is strikingly similar to right-wing Christian fundamentalists who say that only those that believe each word in the bible is the Word of God (without error!) are really Christian. Catholics who say only those opposed to birth control and women’s ordination are “real Catholics”. Only those women who cover themselves from head to toe are “real Muslims”.

That is a very wise comment, Chris, thank you. Although I am into health and fitness, I am a total yoga newbie– however, I have been studying nutrition for many years and after awhile it becomes quite evident that vegetarianism is a superior diet for many reasons, especially in this modern world, given the sedentary lifestyle that most people lead. Sure, the carnivores will say that since cavemen ate meat we should too, but they fail to acknowledge the fact that the difference between the wild game and fish that our ancestors consumed and the modified/drugged/chemically-altered/pesticide-and-pus-ridden/fatty/infected/dirty/disease-laden farm animals that modern humans choke down on a daily basis in insanely greater quantities is the difference between night and day. There is no comparison; it is a moot point.

I’ve been practising yoga for 11 years and teaching for 9 years, I’ve never been a big meat lover, but did eat it and poultry, after a couple of years Yoga practice I found I no longer wanted meat or poultry, it kinda crept up on me, now I do very occaisionally eat fish( maybe once a month) but have no craving for it. I think if you practice asana and pranayama, regularly, yama and niyama become part of your life automatically , I feel so much healthier and peaceful overall than before. Yoga is wonderful when you embrace the whole philosopy.

Yes, you are so right, Sara. There are many wonderful animal rights groups in existence today. I am presently following the work of Japan Earthquake Animal Relief (and have donated) as they help to find and save animals left behind in the earthquake a few weeks ago. PETA however, is a group of opportunistic radical zealots. Some of their actions make me sick to my stomach.

But you see, Yoga is not like an all-you-can-eat salad-bar, where you can pick and choose what you like, and discard what you don’t like.

Vegetarianism is indeed REQUIRED of all Yoga-practioners. The Yoga-instructors in the West pretend that its OK for their students to eat meat, so as to not scare away potential customers.

The West has been trying to appropriate the ancient Hindu wisdom of Yoga, and in doing so they have adopted a pick-and-choose approach.

The West loves the enormous physical benefits that it dervies from doing the various Yoga-Asanas. But infortunately, the West likes its dead-animal-flesh too. So, the West gets all bendy on the Yoga-mats, in the best traditions of Patanjali himself, but continues to stuff its face with animal-flesh, once off the Yoga-mat.

“What’s that ? That’s not Yoga, you say ? Ok, no problem, we’ll just call it Christian-Yoga, and keep on truckin’ “, says the West.

And that’s a rather cynical, opportunistic way to go about practising Yoga.

Well Chris, you certainly sound like one. In fact, if one were to substitute certain words in your post with things that particular Christians/Catholics have said one wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
Example: You say :But you see, Yoga is not like an all-you-can-eat salad-bar, where you can pick and choose what you like, and discard what you don’t like.” Put the word CATHOLICISM in place of YOGA in that sentence and there you have it. A long running debate on who is and isn’t Catholic based on what people believe and/or do (ie. use artificial birth control, sex outside marriage, etc).

I suggest you examine why you feel the need to build up walls around what is and isn’t yoga. The “us” vs “them” thinking you engage in does more to separate people and cause huge fissures in relationships (in people, countries, cultures) than anything else.

“… Disgusting animal the beast in man, but when in pure form, from the heights of his spiritual life, you see it and despise, if you fell, or resist, you remain what you were, but when the same animal behind seeming aesthetic, poetic shell and invoking reverence, then you all sink in and worshiped animal, no longer from wrong. Then this is terrible.”
L.N. Tolstoy

it seems to me yoga teaches compassion towards all living beings. Branding people as true yogis and untrue ones on whatever basis says more, i reckon, about the person doing the branding than anybody else.

You love Yogasanas. You love your meat. You’d love to be able to continue eating meat, and also do your Yogasanas.

But, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t have your Yoga-mat and your meat.

Maybe, someday in the future, when the scientists figure out how to grow animal-protein artificially, there WILL indeed be cruelty-free-meat. However, currently, cruelty-free-meat does NOT exist.

You are CORRECT. Yoga teaches compassion towards all living beings. That is PRECISELY my point. Killing animals just so that mankind might devour their flesh is NOT quite compassion-at-work, and meat-eating is therefore anathema to all that Yoga stands for.

When the vegetarian option clearly does exist (600 Million Vegetarians in India alone), why continue to depend on cruel-meat ?

i am a vegetarian and you are disgusting. yoga is about acceptance. it’s not a religion or a dogma and it shouldn’t be. my teacher and all the teachers i’ve had (who are all quite advanced and have traveled to india, some have lived on ashrams, etc) say it’s okay to eat meat in moderation as long as it is humane and organic.

but even if someone i knew was eating factory farmed meat i wouldn’t tell them they couldn’t do yoga. that is ridiculous. if you want to completely turn people off to a healthy, cruelty-free lifestyle, you’re doing it right.

“It’s okay to eat meat in moderation as long as it is humane and organic” ?

Becky, do you even hear yourself ?

Which part of the killing of an intelligent, sentient mammal is “humane” ? The slicing of its jugular vein and its vertebrae as the poor creature writhes in fear and agony, or the shooting of a bolt through its forehead ? And animals can sense their impending death long before it actually happens, so they live their last few hours in terrible torment.
And just which part of that is humane, Becky ? Get real, there is no such thing as compassionate-meat, or cruelty-free-meat.

It’s time to face the truth. Yoga demands vegetarianism from its students. This has to do with Ahimsa (non-violence), which is an integral part of Yoga. The wise and compassionate Hindu Brahmins of India, who invented Yoga, have been vegetarian for the last 5000 years, and with good reason.

Every discipline makes certain demands of its students.
Practitioners of Karate, Tae-kwan-do, Kung-fu are required to adhere to certain rules, peculiar to their respective discipline. Just so does Yoga demand vegetarianism of its students.

I have found that through yoga practice and teaching I have become a vegetarian, not realising at the time that I was. I just found myself gradually not wanting to eat meat, I think yoga changes you so much , making you mindful of your body and mind and its needs. It’s a gentle life changing thing. It brings awareness , joy and enlightenment.

There might exist a ‘Carnivorous-Bendy-Person”, but never, ever, a Carnivorous Yogi.

Being carnivorous is a violation of the Principle of “Ahimsa” (Non-violence), and Ahimsa is an Integral Part of Yoga.

I’d love to draw you guys a diagram to explain the whole thing.
Maybe, this will explain my point : ” There has never been a non-Catholic Pope, because being Catholic is an integral part of being a Pope”.

I suspect that you guys do indeed understand the connection between between Yoga and Vegetarianism, but you’re so in love with your dose of dead-animal-flesh, that you are in denial, and want to continue having your cake and eating it too.

if ahimsa is an ABSOLUTE principle and killing means violence, are plants living beeings as well?
do you kill a living carrot just because it cannot show the pain, as it is beiing eaten alive?
and can you tell me one more thing? Why is it mentioned in the Hathayogapradipika that you should not eat meat, not even that of goats as a yogi? Either there where yogis of the opinion, that eating a goat is quite fine, and the author was of another opinion, or he meant that a goat is not fine, but chicken is.
Either way: some of the old yogis seems to have been NOT vegetarians. Or are all these strange Hatha-Yogis no REAL yogis at all? because they do all these strange postures and call it yoga, whereas Patanjali sayd clearly that it is ALL about as stable and not-disturbed seated position. So following your argument: you cannot practice all these strange contortions AND be a yogi. So sorry for you: you are not a yogi as well.

You’re saying that Patanjali calls for Yogis to NOT get into various “strange postures” ?

There are no strange postures in Yoga. There are only Asanas.

Any long-term practioner of Yoga will tell you that even the most difficult of Asanas gradually become easier to perform, with practice and dedication.

So much so, that Shirs-asana and Sarvanag-asana, dreaded by Yoga-novices (and perhaps considered “strange-postures” by you) actually become, with some practice, Asanas, in which the mature Yogi is able to relax for extended periods, and also find great peace and contentment. These “strange postures” actually become Asanas that the Yogi looks forward to, as the initial dread is replaced by delight.

You say ” some of the old yogis seems to have been NOT vegetarians”. I’m not sure where you get this, but, we can be sure that any Yogi would have eschewed all meat, in accordance with the sacred Principle of Ahimsa.

As for the tired and specious argument that you advance about plants too feeling pain, it’s like this :

The apple-tree does not die when you pluck an apple from it, but the cow and the chicken do indeed die a painful death, when you pluck their head. Will you still continue to equate the eating of plants with the eating of animals ? No, I didn’t think so !

(needlesstosay, yoga practice is somewhat dogmatic: otherwise one would invent new postures everyday!)
Chris is not yelling, he is trying to state the truth regarding the constituents of yogic practice, and the nature of participation in animal consumption. However, Chris could be excused for venting anger towards participants in a global Holocaust unlike any other. Is it ok to forcefully condemn Nazis? Or child molesters? Violent criminals? Ahh, you say! – Animals are not human?! Racist.
The planet may be able to sustain animal consumption a few times a week per individual. The practice is not only morally indefensible, it is also unsustainable given the resources of the planet. All the best.